


How Many Times Can You Say "I'm Fine" Before You're Not?

by Dikhotomia



Series: Whumptober 2k19: FE3H Edition [24]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 'I'm fine I swear' is the mantra of this fic when in fact 'i'm fine' is the furthest thing from it, Canon-Typical Violence, Day 24 Hidden Wound, Edelgard is an idiot sometimes but I still love her, Gen, Infection, improper wound care, please let people help you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 20:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: "Ferdinand yells, the air shifts beside her and she moves, pivoting on a heel to face the woman at her side. Too close! The blade misses it's intended mark, but still makes itself a cradle in her side, slicing between the contours of her ribs and licking fire in it's wake. The pain in immediate but bearable, and she brings her foot down to keep her balance, shifting her hold on her axe to give her the range she needs as she brings it down to rip through the chest of the woman who stabbed her.The last of them has already been dealt with, Ferdinand's spear having found a home in his sternum. "Are you okay?" He asks and she waves him off, peering between the edges of her ruined coat and shirt."OREdelgard's stubbornness comes back to bite her.





	How Many Times Can You Say "I'm Fine" Before You're Not?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this at midnight and I don't even care.

The assignment was rudimentary, a simple sweep and clear of zealots she knew had been stirred up by Thales. She thinks, briefly when the Professor lapses into the silence of thought herself, that some of what he does is a waste of time. It was important to gain themselves allies for the war to come, but foolish to squander them by pushing their buttons and turning them so soon. She likes the idea of eyes and ears and hands all over Fódlan (though she wasn't exactly lacking in them to begin with), but she's also unable to speak to these people herself. 

So Thales gets to keep stirring up the hornets and letting them swarm angry and stinging only to be swatted down and crushed underfoot. She then wonders, attention slowly drawn to the rest of her class, each of them waiting (some less patiently) for the Professor's orders, if maybe these people simply chose to stir themselves up.

She weighs the former and the latter like precious metals on scale trays, frowning to herself when it becomes obvious; these people have made their own choices. They take the information given to them, and take action. Surely they didn't understand the full picture due to (likely purposeful) negligence, but it didn't make it any less grating.

Ultimately, she reminds herself, arms lifted over her head in a stretch that nearly yields a yawn, it's to keep the church and it's knights distracted. It gave them all time to move unencumbered by the worries of being caught. 

There had to be a better way...

The Professor starts speaking and Edelgard snaps back to the present with the sound of it, blinking back into focus and listening as the older woman lays out her strategy. Simple, pointed, quick. A pincer attack that sees her leading the flanking team while the Professor and the rest of the class keep the enemy distracted. It should be easy, but Edelgard knows better than to believe that.

Nothing was ever 'easy' and she's proven right shortly after they descend into the woods bordering the small town. The overgrowth of ferns and grass and other plants provide the cover they need, moving through them with trained precision as the sounds of battle from inside the town carry in the morning's crisp air. At first she doesn't notice anything, focused on the track of the fence and the buildings, drawing her path along the mental map she'd created while standing atop the nearby hill.

"It is too quiet," Petra murmurs. "I am not hearing a single bird, the sign is bad."

"It could be because of the battle," Bernadetta replies, simply a voice among the ferns she hides in. "They're just as scared of it as me!"

Edelgard stills, listening in the space between their chatter and the more distant clash of weapons and shouts. The forest is silent save for the breeze that rustles the foliage as it whispers through. "It could be because of us," she says, glancing back at the few gathered behind her. "But there could be enemies hidden here as well." She knew better than to discredit Petra's warnings.

The other woman's intuition hadn't ever lead her astray.

"Then it would be best we don't let our guard down," Ferdinand chimes in, scanning their surroundings as much as the rest of them.

They lapse into silence after that, and Edelgard counts the seconds until they need to break out of the treeline and into the streets. The tension climbs with her senses, every noise that didn't come from the people around her making them all pause to listen.

The attack comes exactly where Edelgard had hoped it wouldn't, soldiers bursting from the underbrush just as they begin to make their way out, catching them without cover.

Bernadetta scrambles away while the rest of them rush to meet their opponents. Eight to their four.

But odds matter little in the game of crests, the first going down to Bernadetta's arrows and she ignores the girl's shouted apology as she clashes with the next, axe grinding sparks across her opponent's sword. Beside her Petra downs a second with a cut throat, blood splattering warm against her cheek. A third finds himself impaled on the end of Ferdinand's spear and dropped to the dirt in the same motion. It makes her own opponent pause, casting a furtive glance at the bodies on the ground. Edelgard uses the distraction to bury the blade of her axe between the plates of the woman's armor, feeling bone and cartilage snap under the force of the blow. She wrenches up, yanking the weapon free in an arch that paints the ground red by her feet.

She's gone before the body falls, weaving between Ferdinand and Petra to stop the attack aimed at the latter. There's four more, but she only counts three, each of them occupied by one of their number. She catches sight of Bernadetta vaulting over the fence and wheeling to scan the battlefield again, hears the gurgling wheeze of another wrecked throat while she uses the handle of her axe to parry another attack.

The last one must have tried to go warn the others, and she silently hopes that they fell to Bernadetta.

(She knows better-)

Ferdinand yells, the air shifts beside her and she moves, pivoting on a heel to face the woman at her side. Too close! The blade misses it's intended mark, but still makes itself a cradle in her side, slicing between the contours of her ribs and licking fire in it's wake. The pain in immediate but bearable, and she brings her foot down to keep her balance, shifting her hold on her axe to give her the range she needs as she brings it down to rip through the chest of the woman who stabbed her.

The last of them has already been dealt with, Ferdinand's spear having found a home in his sternum. "Are you okay?" He asks and she waves him off, peering between the edges of her ruined coat and shirt.

"I'm fine, it just got my clothes," she lies, turning to face them. "We have to hurry, this delayed us long enough."

The rest of the plan, thankfully, goes off without a hitch.

She becomes aware of the blood while they're walking, wet and warm and sticking her shirt to her side. The wound throbs to the beat of her heart and she ignores it, resisting the urge to press her hand against it. It's nothing to worry about, she'd told both Hubert and the Professor, just the uniform. She didn't need to be coddled by either of them each time she was wounded. But the longer they walk, the throb becomes an ache and blood further seeps into her clothes.

It slows her, leaves her walking between her class and the few knights that had come along to provide backup. "I'm just tired," she says when Alois asks if she's okay, and it's not a lie, because she is. The adrenaline from battle has left her feeling a little wrung out, muscles sore, hunger and thirst chipping at the edges.

They stop for the night at a larger village and Edelgard disappears into her room without much fanfare, thankful when no one tries to derail her. She shrugs her uniform coat and gloves off the moment the lock slides home and she steps into the room, setting it aside on a chair and looking down at herself.

Her shirt is a mess, blood staining her entire side from her waist to her armpit and then some. She grimaces as she peels that off too, gritting her teeth as the fabric sticks to the edges of her wound and comes away like pulling stitches. It stings and she lets it, looking over what she can see of it. Red, angry, a little swollen but nothing she was worried about, bleeding slightly thanks to her recent disturbance of it.

She uses a towel, pressing it to her side and holding it there with her forearm as she fills the water basin in the bathroom and finds where the staff had tucked away the bandages in the cabinets. The water is pink by the time she finishes cleaning the gash (and herself), hissing her displeasure as it throbs it's protest. She wraps it, winding the bandages as tight as she can without restricting herself too much, tying it off right over the deepest part of the wound. 

It becomes an attempt to clean as much of the blood out of her shirt as possible before leaving it hanging by the fire, pulling her coat and her gloves back on and leaving to order something to eat. She makes small talk with the few of her classmates she sees, sitting and eating with them at Dorothea's insistence. 

They leave the next morning. Her shirt is stiff and she makes a note to throw it out once they reach the monastery.

(And she does.)

\------

She wakes up with a fever on the third day back from their mission, her side aches and throbs worse than it had and at first she passes it off as the healing process. At least until she goes to change the bandages, wincing as she pulls the fabric away and looks down at the gash. It's angrier, redder and the swelling as become something worse. She's careful when she touches it, the skin warm and tender under her fingers. 

Infection.

It's...unpleasant to look at.

She should go see Professor Manuela, but with how often the woman was too hung over to function she dropped the thought as quickly as it came to mind. She could go talk to Hubert, or find one of the others who specialized in healing magic. But she also doesn't want to trouble them either, it's not the first time she's had to deal with an infected wound, and she has a lot more resources to handle it then she did back then.

So she cleans it again, covers it with a wound salve and a fresh set of bandages and hopes.

\----

Training is an exercise in misery, her side spitting fire through her nerves as she moves through the motions, wood clattering loudly against wood as she clashes with the Professor. The other woman sees right through her, stepping swiftly away and watching her with a look of concern. "Edelgard," she says, wooden sword hanging at her side.

"You're moving slower than usual, not to mention every time we clash you wince."

"It's nothing to trouble yourself with," She says, leaning gently on the wooden axe. "I just pulled a muscle."

The Professor doesn't buy it, her frown deepening as she looks her over. "You're favoring your right side, not to mention..." she trails off coming forward and lifting the blade. Edelgard flinches back on instinct, and wood thunks dammingly against wood as she uses the handle of the training weapon to stop the Professor's attempt to tap her side.

"You're defensive of your left. More so than usual."

She clicks her tongue, stepping out of range and slinging the axe over her shoulder. "Like I said, I just pulled a muscle." She leaves before the older woman can protest, tracking back across the grounds to give another student a turn. Dorothea and Hubert both cast her worried looks.

Edelgard ignores them both.

\-----

The fever is higher the next morning, leaving her feeling drained and wanting to roll over and go back to sleep. Sitting up proves to be even harder, getting halfway there before pain stabs white hot and burning and she grits her teeth to hold down the cry that perches under her chin. She stays there, half hanging out of her bed, breathing through her nose and waiting for the pain to pass. It inches back bit by bit, returning to a throb that's just at the line of tolerable and refuses to lessen from there no matter how long she waits.

She moves slower, inching from her one foot on the ground, leaning on her elbow and trying not to throw up from pain position to both feet on the ground, upright and still nauseous. She sits a few minutes more, hands clutching the edges of her mattress before she pushes herself up to her feet.

The pain is immediate, the shift of muscle and skin enough to make her hiss, trembling as the second wave of fresh agony lances through her side. The collection of words she almost gives voice to are inappropriate at best, coming out half spoken and breaking around a growl.

So, maybe this has gotten out of her control.

Maybe, she thinks, as she moves at the speed of a snail, gingerly peeling away her shirt and then the bandages, it was time she asks for help. Yes, she amends when she looks at the wound now, the redness having spread in a trickling pool across her skin, the swelling and the smell telling her of how bad it has grown.

She knows what she needs to do, eyeing the few knives she has and the flickering candle on her desk. She needs to drain it, cauterize it --

The knock on her door freezes her in her reach for a knife, attention drawn from it to whoever it is whose come looking for her. "Edie?" Dorothea sounds worried, knocking again when she doesn't answer right off. "Edie, you're late for class and everyone's concerned, are you okay?"

"No," she says through gritted teeth, forcing herself up to her feet when the knob rattles as Dorothea tries to open the door. 

"Edelgard, if you can please let me in."

"Hold on," she says, pressing a towel to her side and gingerly limping her way across the room. Dorothea isn't bothered to see her in her state of undress (or, much to her surprise, her scars) when she finally pulls the door open, looking at her a moment like she was pulling her leg.

"Edie, did you stay up too late or-" her eyes drop to her side, then widen, hand pressing to her mouth. "What happened?! No, wait, don't tell me yet." She's ushered back into her room, the girl's hands cool on her bare shoulders as she's lead back to her chair and sat down. 

"I was injured on the mission the other day," she explains, flinching hard when Dorothea removes the towel. "I thought I could take care of it, after all it...wasn't the first injury I've had."

"Well you were wrong!" Dorothea interrupts, bending down to take a closer look. "Goodness Edie this is awful! I'm going to go get Professor Manuela, don't you dare go anywhere."

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," she mutters mulishly, leaning an elbow against the arm of the chair to relieve some of the pain in her side. "Hurts too much."

"You're too stubborn for your own good, you know that?" Dorothea comments, pinning her with a look she'd gotten more than once in the past before the other girl was leaving, shutting the door behind her. She can hear her running off down the hall, shouting an apology to someone as she goes.

She dozes, or what passes off as it, startling when Dorothea returns with Manuela in tow.

"Honestly Edelgard," the older woman says as she comes across the room, clicking her tongue in sympathy when she sees her state. "Please don't hesitate to seek me out of you need help." 

"Next time I promise I will," she replies.

She's made to further regret her choices, grinding her teeth and clinging to Dorothea's arms while Manuela drains the wound and cleans it again.

"Come see me tomorrow," Manuela says once she's done, making it sound more like an order. "I need to make sure the infection goes away before I can heal it."

"Yes Professor," she replies, face pressed to Dorothea's side to hide the tears in her eyes. 

"Good."

Silently, she promises never to do this again.

Stubbornness was only good sometimes.


End file.
